Monday, July 14, 2014

What goes on at the Gildersleeve plant

The Great Gildersleeve was one of the first spin-offs in broadcast history, his character having been a regular on Fibber McGee & Molly for several seasons. On the initial program, still called The Johnson Wax Program (it was later sponsored by Kraft Foods), Gildy takes off for a while from his factory, which manufactures girdles. When he gets to Summerfield, his nephew Leroy has the mistaken impression that the factory makes girders, not girdles, and that Gildy is a rough, tough steelworker. He quips to his uncle, "I'll bet you make the supports for a lot of big projects there." Naturally, that got quite a laugh.

Interestingly, in this initial program, Gildersleeve's niece is named Evelyn, not Marjorie, as she was later.

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